High performance silicon components are a very important technology for consumer electronics, such as in the front end module (FEM) of a cellular telephone. For example, the FEM includes switches, power Amps, controllers, filters, etc. Currently, this technology space is almost exclusively GaAs; however, significant inroads are now being made into this space with Silicon on Sapphire (SoS). Due to the insulating nature of sapphire substrates, semiconductor devices formed on the surface have excellent isolation and thermal dissipation, resulting in ultra high performance. However, processing on sapphire wafers is difficult and very expensive. For example, processing of active or passive devices on sapphire wafers does not use conventional SOI semiconductor fabrication processes, which adds to the complexity and costs of fabrication.
Accordingly, there exists a need in the art to overcome the deficiencies and limitations described hereinabove.